photographer, portraitist; he’s not dead. Just his 50
solo shows, 28 published books, work at MoMA
and regular contributions to publications like
Purple and The Face relocated his work to zones of
greater exposure. Exhuming his work; his
three-decade devotion to getting people off,
bumming people out– from its original birthplace.
Far beneath the frothed up, desire-policing
layers of polite society: the American unreality.
He has, however, brought his New York
Girls series back to life, in collaboration
with No Agency. New York Girls Now is
made of 27 new girls. The same contortions of
“perversion”. The same guns, candle-sucking
and cigarettes, looked at different.
At the Above will exhibit original photographs
from the 2022 – 2024 series, alongside the
launch of a limited-edition hardcover book.
“It is always possible to be transgressive in
some manner,” Kern once offered an interviewer,
who could no longer dream dissent beyond
this “numb, unfeeling, image-saturated age”.
The first book was delivered to Barnes and
Noble concealed in paper. A lot of the groups
that rallied against Kern’s work, twenty
years ago, now speak in praise. Remember:
yesterday’s outrage is tomorrow’s
endorsement deal.
Like their ‘93 predecessors, the Now girls
dress in bondage, little, nothing. Left behind
is the homespun hyperstylized. This is
all-natural, realer than real. No bedding
backdrop; backyard Peep Show. It’s you;
watching without obstruction. The walls
between subject, viewer, and photographer got a
hellof a lot thinner since the nineties. But these
girls know you are watching, you know, Kern
knows and the guy beside you knows that
you know he knows. So what’s the
problem? Exactly. It’s voyeurist whiplash.
A slip and slide of perversion, pleasures.
Besides, these girls live today, Now, when we
know most of what we look at looks right back
at us. Kern says the series is about “the absurdity
of truth and objectivity in photography,”
prodding our blind loyalty to classification
systems around sexual representation. The
best part of anything is watching, the
photographer once said, parting the legs to his
mind.
Every peel-and-stick photograph hanging on
the wall is a personal invitation. But the looping
video at your back, larger than lifesize, says
“party’s over.” Paranoia always shows up early and
leaves last. What is a “perversion” if everybody’s
doing it, abnormality goes on sabbatical?
People don’t know what to do with
Kern, his girls, their guns; themselves: New York
Girls ranks #2,180 in ‘Erotic Photography
Books’ on Amazon. ‘Face to Panty Ratio’ Kern’s
short film (with music by Thurston Moore)
lives on www.xvideos.com beside: ‘She
Hulk XXX’ ‘Girls Convinced To Have A Painted
Body Bikini For Cash’ ‘Nurse and aesthetician
observes patient’s erection!’ and ‘Sex Adiction, the
movie’.
The falsehoods of consensus and the absurdity
of truth. We would sooner drown in crystal waters
than discover ourselves (or be caught) any morally
unmapped place. “Well, that’s your deal” is Richard
Kern’s standard reply, No Agency founder
Alexander Tsebelis writes in the afterword.
Well, that’s your deal. People just don’t know
what to do with these New York Girls, Richard
Kern, themselves. It is always possible to
be transgressive in some manner.
The best part is watching.
Come look, come see.